Not location specific, No rules: Welcome to ILX heaven

i've heard, i've heard..

Tequila is meant to be sipped.

Slamming it with ginger ale wasn't a wise start to my 18th birthday breakfast then?

I have heard horrible Bailey's curdle thing before. Someone told me if you swill it around long enough it goes solid.

baileys with milk or ice, or never. that curdle thing is just nnnggrr!

Slamming it with ginger ale wasn't a wise start to my 18th birthday breakfast then?

That sounds completely disgusting. It's fantastic on it's, as an unslammed shot. You shouldn't mess up the taste with anything but triple sec and lime juice.

Chocolate maybe?

My booze stock just now:
about half a bottle of Glenmorangie
bottle of Whyte & Mackay (wtf I didn't buy that!)
about half a litre of Spiced Rum
bottle of dark rum
about half a litre of Wild turkey
about half a litre of Southern Comfort (I can't look at this stuff any more, I feed it to visitors)
bottle of Jameson's
1/3 bottle of Malibu (I think Anne drinks that with pineapple juice)
4 bottles red - random supermarket cheapos mostly
2 bottle white - see above
2 bottles of sparkly white (a Spanish and an Aussie I think)
bottle of pink shampoo
beers & beers & beers

Morning/afternoon/evening, y'all!

I've just barely caught up on all of today's posts -- my head is still stuffy and it's making me really slow. I would totally be up for going to the pub, though (yes, even though it's 9:37 - I like to think of it as less 'alcoholic' and more 'dedicated').

At home update:

Bossa Glogg mulled shit from Ikea (opened, couple of mouthfuls)
Warninks advocaat (opened, not much gone)
Mount Gay sugar cane brandy (opened, mostly gone)
another bottle of Tanqueray gin (unopened)
Emoor Punch (unopened)
Jim Beam Black bourbon (opened, 1/3 gone)
Wild Turkey 101 bourbon (opened, 3/4 gone)
Olorosso (opened, for cooking, half gone)
port (unopened)
Havana Club unaged rum (opened, nearly gone)
Amaretto (opened, for cooking, half empty)
Martini bianco and rosso (opened, for the ladies)
cinzano vermouth (opened, can't think why)
Pimms (opened, nearly empty, summer is over)
Absolut raspberri (opened, had a good bash at it since it tastes like cough medicine)
triple sec (opened, for margaritas)
caprinha or whatever it's called (opened, half drunk)
schlaederer (opened, nearly finished thank the lord)

I definitely feel like an alkie now. :-(

Ah let's get over this insistence that champagne by itself is somehow amazing.

chacun à son goût and all, but a really good champagne is a thing of beauty to me.

I know the market is presently awash in new liquors and whatnot, many of them vile, but has anybody tried this stuff?

St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur

Their branding/website is annoying in the extreme, but I had a 'martini' made with it and something else I don't recall the other night, and it was really quite good.

I'm kind of only weighing in on this at the end, because I don't give a crap about spirits, really, but good vintage champagne is FANTASTIC.

But, you know, bring on the wine for me anyway. I know nothing about it, so don't be all "oh hey, don't you love the Mercurey", but I just do love it. It's terribly moreish.

to make aldo feel better!
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1237/1450142898_2f8f922a9d.jpg
the heap of flammables:
starting in the left back:
Pitu Cachaça (for caipirinhas), Kahlua, Torada tequila (rotgut and ancient), Maker's Mark (from a party).
next row forward: Bols triple sec (as old as the cheap tequila), 2nd bottle of Kahlua (2 for one sale), with a short XO vodka (delicious!) in front, Tito's Handmade vodka (local yum), Ciroc vodka distilled from grapes (eh), Campari (+soda, my favorite).
2nd from front: 2 bottles Jamesons 12 year both half knackered, Dr. Faust white wine (gift from friends), Noble House ice wine (bought for a party, unopened), 3rd bottle Kahlua (I have no idea), Antigua Cruz silver tequila (a present for Mr. P), Knockando 12 year (ditto), buffalo grass vodka (brought from Poland by dear friends).
front row: fruitwood stain, Bols cherry flavored brandy (anyone know what to do with this? we ended up with it by accident), Bushmills, Balvenie Doublewood 12 year (Mr. P again), Freixenet brut (wedding present? who knows), aerosol sunblock (50 spf), Midleton very rare (in box, a present to Mr. P).

freezer: 2 bottles of vodka (Tito's and the one in the aluminum bottle), one nearly empty bottle of ouzo.
top of fridge: 3 bottles of wine. there's also one more bottle of bubbly somewhere that was a gift.

p.s.--broke a fever while typing, and didn't touch a drop of any of it.

At the moment all we have in our drinks cabinet is things like bols and grenadine. We are out of proper drink. Unless you consider icewine to be proper drink. (Yummy for winter.)

Oh God, I had forgotten the icewine. There's a couple of bottles of that too. And a bottle of mandarin liqueur I remembered about when I was in the pub.

(yes, all that booze in the cupboard and I was still in the pub last night.)

We have several bottles of sparkling wine, two bottles of Moet Chandon, two boxes of red wine, several assorted bottles of red, white and rose (mostly supermarket cheapos, a couple of nice ones that were presents), vodka, bacardi, whisky, jack daniels, morgan's spiced rum, some honey rum that my mum bought me from spain which is nice on ice cream/in coffee, brandy, marie brizard, baileys, grenadine, gin, some miniature tequilas which my old boss brought me back from mexico about six years ago, cointreau, tia maria and some horrible-looking alcohol from Thailand which I am frightened to open as it looks like urine and probably tastes like paintstripper (present from friend). We used to have glayva and drambuie as well, but I appear to have finished those and haven't replaced them yet.

I remembered to put my skins in to soak this morning, so I will definitely be doing sossies when I get home.

I have four cans of carlsberg. You are all drunks. For shameWell done!

And now I have a Sky HD box as well. Bye everyone! See you when the sun comes back!

Oh, by the way, in case anyone feels very rich, my brother is running the Dublin City Marathon this year in aid of Console, which is a charity that provides counselling services for people in Ireland who are bereaved by suicide. It's an issue close to our family, because my cousin committed suicide a couple of years ago, and it hit us all very hard, as it does everyone.

Here's the link if you've a few spare quid. If not, no biggie, but I hope you don't mind me asking.

http://www.mycharity.ie/event/edbyrnemarathon/

(yes, all that booze in the cupboard and I was still in the pub last night.)

I didn't go to the pub. I went to Tesco for milk & bread & stuff and OH LOOK A "WINE FESTIVAL" and spent about £20 more than I intended. Then we polished off a bottle and a half :)

My Dad's just sent me a text about going to a dodgy pub quiz he goes to on a Friday at teatime. Going means leaving work really early and therefore ending up totally hammered by closing time :-/ That said, it's a piss easy quiz, got 22/25 last week (despite stupid questioner asking questions wrong*) and the nearest to us was on 17. £20 prize = free drinks for an hour or so - we were thinking of splitting into 2 teams to win the £10 2nd prize too :)

Football tomorrow as well, I hate being onimoed at the football.

*that was the one I texted you about aldo - turned out the answer was "no-one, ever, unless I change the question when I read out the answer"

Don't you lot skive on a Friday? At this rate I'm going to end up w*rking!

the horror! anyway, back to work.

I'm currently in "what am i having for lunch?" mode.

And these old computer game threads are giving me the urge to download an emulator or two.

I'm just out of a FUCK! PANIC! WE ARE BANKRUPT! meeting, which has given me a pile of work for the rest of the day. Which I might not do, obviously.

I haven't set up MAME since I bought my last computer, I must have another go at it - though it pains me to discover I'm now shit at games I used to be expert at. I used to complete Ghosts & Goblins for 10p, now I couldn't do it with £10 worth of continues.

I do have good SNES and Megadrive/Genesis emulators courtesy of Mr Cowpat. I might dig them out over the weekend for a wee game.

I'm always disappointed by Speccie games when I replay them. Nostalgia just isn't enough in most cases.

I agree that the vast majority of spectrum games don't stand up anymore. I still one or two maddeningly addictive, though.
I always found Ghosts'n'Goblins incredibly hard - how much money did you put into the arcade machine to get that good?

please to instruct on emulator attainment.

I always found Ghosts'n'Goblins incredibly hard - how much money did you put into the arcade machine to get that good?

Loads. The worst thing was the bit when you finally fight through to the 6th(?) boss for the first time ever only to find it won't let you through unless you have the shield "weapon".
Other coin ops I was v good at: Salamander, SiniStar (RUN COWARD! BEWARE, I LIVE!), Robotron, Shaolin's Road (I used to play that in the local shop during my school lunch and had to leave it running after 40 mins still on my 1st credit). I also loved Commando, Centipede and Double Dragon but could never get top scores in the arcade.

My older brother was like a machine on Robotron. He got to the stage where the screen was just full of bad guys with barely a space between them and he'd have to shoot himself a path to run through. It was mesmerizing watching him. Robotron's a shit game to play on emulators as you need the two joystick control to do it justice.

Why do my local pubs not do early Friday pub quizzes? That sounds like fun.

I shall defer to others on arcade games as I NEVER played them ever.

Onimo, who is driving tomorrow? If you come round to pick me up at my house, I have an old VCR for you as requested by Mrs O, and I might also have finished the new Christopher Brookmyre if I don't get distracted by pub. I can't do the driving as I'm not coming back home after the football, since it is me and the mister's wedding anniversary and we are going out to eat and drink and be merry, hurrah.

I R jealous of Trish's HD box. I am in love with my Sky+, but couldn't justify shelling out on an HD box and TV right now. Maybe next year.

I think Andy is driving but I haven't spoken to him. I'll phone him later and let you know. If he isn't then I will so you'll be picked up anyway. We'll aim to leave by 1pm and pick you up at home.

I just finished Brookmyre's "Be My Enemy" (I only buy them when Monsieur le Fopp does them for £3) which was brilliantly stupidly gory fun.

Happy anniversary for tomorrow!

new Christopher Brookmyre

Any good? Please no Parlabane!

Please no Parlabane!

No luck :(

Synopsis
Do you believe in ghosts? Do we really live on in some conscious form after we die, and is that form capable of communicating with the world of the living? Aye, right. That was Jack Parlabane's stance on the matter, anyway. But this was before he found himself in the more compromising position of being not only dead himself, but worse: dead with an exclusive still to file. From his position on high, Parlabane relates the events leading up to his demise, largely concerning the efforts of charismatic psychic Gabriel Lafayette to reconcile the scientific with the spiritual by submitting to controlled laboratory tests. Parlabane is brought in as an observer, due to his capacities as both a sceptic and an expert on deception, but he soon finds his certainties crumbling and his assumptions turned upside down as he encounters phenomena for which he can deduce no rational explanation. Perhaps, in a world in which he can find himself elected rector of an esteemed Scottish university, anything truly is possible. One thing he knows for certain, however: Death is not the end ? it's the ultimate undercover assignment.

Hmmm

I bought Julian Cope's krautrocksampler off amazong (as a companion to japrocksampler) and it's in FUCKING GERMAN. :-(

Arse (xpost). So tired of Parlabane, always the same thing :(

I thought you read German? Did I just make that up?

xpost

Also is japrocksampler worth the money in?

I do read German, to a degree (I actually said as much in the car this morning) but given one of the main motivations for buying it is Copey's writing itself then translating a translation of it seems a bit... crap... somehow.

I've only flipped through japrocksampler, but if you like some of the big hitters in it - Les Rallizes Denudes, Flower Travellin' Band, the whole Group Sounds era - then it's apparently a blast.

one of the main motivations for buying it is Copey's writing itself

Fair point, Head On/Repossessed is a great read. I don't fancy the megalith stuff but I might check out the Kraut/Jap books. I imagine they're handy to have lying around for occasional inspiration.

Reporting back:

I made creme de cassis and poppyseed cake (2tbsps of cassis in the mix) with cassis buttercream sandwiching it all together. It makes SUCH an incredibly pretty cake! I took a photo but it's stuck on the phone for the moment. Why there no wai 2 just press button and make picture on internet go?? (At least not on my flipping Sony Ericsson w800i as far as I can figure). I recommend the cake to all of yers!

Have picked up molasses (BLACKSTRAP) from Planet Organic. Tonight is going to be the attempt at ginger cake.

I wish I could do cakes, or, more appropriately, I wish I had people who would eat cakes if I made them. My previous attempts at cakes have been quite good, but they tend to just linger around the house half-eaten.

Hmmm just had interesting chat with estate agent. Looks like he's losing it if he doesn't sell it by tonight! Well, he knows how far I'll go on it. Happy days, pity I can't drink for lunch :(

I really enjoy baking things like scones and muffins, but the problem is that you can end up eating them all by yourself and eating a dozen muffins by yourself is never good for you.

I struggle with baking, to be honest.

Yeah, I like to bake more but if I don't have an occasion to bake for I just end up gorging myself on them which is somewhat suboptimal really.

Anything I bake is scarfed down in record time by G. Then he complains that I'm making him fat.

Trish I donated a little bit for your brother - crap exchange rates and all.

Since we're asking favors for siblings, this just requires a couple of minutes of boredom and ability to view videos. My brother's in a contest to get a morning DJ job at a local hip hop station. There's a million entries and so the only real way to stand out is with views. So if you get a chance, watch his. :)

http://k104tube.com/play.php?vid=290

Also we got another kitten this morning. don't ask.

Can't help myself: why another kitten?

Have to go out to house for another viewing to be sure. Groan. Can't get the builder to go sadly.

Ha ha I recognise those shoes!

From my flickr? He is a master and his lazy good-for-nothing webmaster needs to make him a real site to get some more business. (webmaster=me)

It's a long story with the cats and we are in a pickle. George says we must wait until we're home tonight, and have a drink, before we sort it all out. :/